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The right to vote is recognized as a fundamental political right of the citizens. Its universal character is a guarantee for democratic governance. In recent years there has been a decline in citizens’ political activity, leading to a non-participation in elections. The ideas to introduce compulsory voting system pose a threat to aconstitutional right being transformed into a legal obligation.
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The reforms in the political system in Bulgaria are usually confined to changes in the electoralsystem. The government is not directly affected by the evolution of the party system, and its effectiveness does not directly depend on the number of political parties. The stability of the party system is not the only criterion for assessing the political representation. Proposals to change the electoral system are primarily aimed at reducing the number of parties in order to form one-party parliamentary majority. However, these majorities do not always achieve political stability.
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The article presents the distinction between the functions of the National Assembly – „political” and „constitutional”. The constitutional parliamentary functions are divided into three groups - legislative, constitutive and control. Each function is analyzed by virtue of specific powers of the National Assembly. Elements of the rationalization of parliamentarism in recent times in Europe are also found in the Constitutionof the Republic of Bulgaria. On the one hand, the powers of the political institution have been enriched, with the possibility of parliamentary oversight of the authorities activity, which the National Assembly forms in whole or in part. On the other hand, within the parliamentary control function, the Constitution establishes a clear boundary between the parliamentary control over the executive power and the possibilities for seeking collective political responsibility.
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Manuscript No. 1160 (XIV c.) from Church-Historical and Archival Institute by the St. Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Sofia contains the text of the Slavic penitential nomocanon – rules for church-legal regulation of the behavior of Orthodox Christians derived from Scripture, from the apostolic and the Church Fathers rules, from the rules of the Church Councils. It is believed without necessarily having a direct and clear evidence that on ff. 165a-181b in the manuscript contained a corpus of rules whose alleged author was Patriarch Basil (1186 – 1232) himself. The translation of the rules is carried out from an independently established text of the facsimile edition of the monument. Until now, they have not been translated from Old Bulgarian language to Modern Bulgarian language.
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After the amendment of Criminal Procedure Code, made in 2011, the Supreme Court of Cassation in a cassation review, after double remittal of the case to the lower court, in further (third) hearings, has appellate powers – art. 354, par. 5, sent. 2 of Criminal Procedure Code. The act, delivered in this way, is final. This violates the right of appeal of the convicted person, established in art. 2 of Protocol 7 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Granted opportunity this act to be reviewed under the extraordinary control through re-opening of criminal proceedings can’t ”compensate” the deprivation of the right of appeal. The violation of European standards for right of appeal can lead to many judgments against Bulgaria in the European court of human rights in Strasbourg. That’s why this article should be abolished.
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The article presents a theoretical analysis of the term “gender”, taken from the perspective of the gender theory. The inaccuracies in the meaning of the terms “gender” and “sex”, caused by the translation in Bulgarian, are assessed based on the complexity of their semiosis. The need to introduce the term is justified based on the legal neologism in the Bulgarian terminological legal system, in case of the occurrence of the future ratification of Istanbul Convention.
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The article examines the attitude of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church towards the proclamation of the state independence of Bulgaria in 1908 and 1909. The text also analyses the public discussion in the press, aroused by the issue concerning the fate of the exarchate in the Ottoman Empire under the changed political circumstances.
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The problems concerning the constitutional settlement of the issues related to the principles of the structure and functioning of the judiciary occupy an important place in the elaboration of the Constitution of 1947. The article reveals the impact of the political changes on the modification of the constitutional provisions determining the position of the judiciary as an integral part of the state organization. The author dwells on the alternative views and positions expressed during the discussions by the political opponents, such as the Bulgarian Workers’ Party (Communists) and its allies in the Fatherland Front, as well as by the opposition. The author follows the process of elimination of the typical parliamentary principles of the judiciary and the imposition of the Soviet state doctrine in constitutional law governing the structure and functioning of the judiciary on the eve of the adoption of the Constitution of 1947.
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This paper focuses upon the section Treatment of Homicide of the Icelandic Gray Goose Laws (Grágás) and deals with cases of murder and attempts to cause bodily injury to a person, and with the penalties inflicted for such acts. According to Grágás two were the punishments imposed for injuring or killing a person and the choice between them depended on the character and the graveness of the act. The milder punishment was the so called lesser outlawry which meant confiscation of property and exile for three years but with temporary rights of residence and passage. While abroad the perpetrator was immune from attack but could entirely lose this right in case he did not strictly obey the law. He could return to a normal life after three years. The more severe penalty was the full outlawry which meant loss of all goods, loss of status, and denial of assistance – virtually a death penalty. It was a life-long outlawry. It is stipulated in the code what is a bodily injury and an attempt is made at classifying injures. An attacked and injured person was entitled to seek for justice and to insist that lesser outlawry should be inflicted as a punishment. According to Grágás the penalty for murder was full outlawry. Besides in killing cases kindred payments were supposed to be made to members of the dead man’s family by corresponding members of the killer’s family: this atonement was legally due irrespective of the outcome of a lawsuit for the crime. The analysis of the section Treatment of Homicide of the Icelandic Gray Goose Laws shows that outlawry was the predominant penalty. The law stipulates it in most cases of injuring or murdering a person. It is difficult to tell what effect this punishment had. Undoubtedly its gravity should not be underestimated. The exiled person was lonely since he was excluded from all social contacts and was threatened by violence and death from unrelated third parties who sought to increase their own prestige by killing an outlaw. Probably such a punishment had a preventive effect upon the Icelandic society and restrained the committing of serious legal offences.
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The present article tries to elucidate the origins and activities of Theophilos I – an Archbishop of Tarnovo in the early 16th century. As a successor of the Tarnovo Patriarchate, which had existed before the Ottoman conquest of Bulgaria at the end of the 14th century, the city continued to play an important role in the Orthodox world. Therefore, Theophilos I took a very high position, which is obvious by the documents mentioning his name. Unfortunately, the information about him is scanty. There are few documents, found out mainly in the archives of the Mount Athos monasteries but they are limited to the period between 1527 and 1530. The origins of Theophilos is obscure. However, based on a new reading of an inscription in the monastery of Mylopotamos, where he had been a hieromonk prior to becoming an archbishop of Tarnovo, the author concludes that his native town was Arta in Epirus, Greece.
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The paper proposes a lexicographic model for a thesaurus of the Old Bulgarian language. This model can well be used as a template for a diachronic presentation of this type of lexical relations. The goals of the project for such a dictionary are also outlined here: the collection and lexicographic processing of the wealth of synonyms in the Old Bulgarian language. The theoretical formulation, on which the dictionary is to be constructed, is also well-grounded here, that is the concept of the word as a ternary substance charactrerised by: an absolute value (its meaning), a relative value (its quality to be stylistically marked or stylistically neutral as well as its ability to enter into various semantic relations with other words) and a combinative value (its syntactic-semantic positions and the series of lexemes capable of filling them). What is further discussed are some issues related to the macrostructure and microstructure of the dictionary. Also, the advantages of its creation are given.
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The article analyzes the legal framework of one of the classical forms of parliamentary control – the no-confidence vote – as the main way of engaging and realizing the political responsibility of the Bulgarian Council of Ministers. Its implications are considered in both legal and political terms. The mechanisms laid down by the fathers of the 1991 Constitution, which protect the government from unjustified early termination of its powers, are analyzed. The need for more transparency in the implementation of the controlling powers of the National Assembly is stressed upon.
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The article deals with the conclusion of the Agreement between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Hellenic Republic on the use of the waters of the Mesta River (1996). Attention is paid to the parliamentary debates arising from President Zhelyu Zhelev’s veto of the Law on Ratification of the Agreement. An analysis is carried out of Greece’s policy on both the specific issue, which is also interrelated with the opening of new border checkpoints, and the role Bulgaria’s southern neighbour plays as a member of NATO and the EU. It has been noted that Greece saw the need to support the development of democratic mechanisms and institutions that would lay the foundations for Bulgaria’s future EU membership and real commitment.
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Historians still debate the exact qualification of the province of Judea, especially following the discovery of the well-known inscription concerning Pontius Pilate, which led to a review of many judgments about the titling of the governor of the region, which would not have been that of procurator as was believed until the discovery, but of praefectus. A careful examination of the sources, in particular of Josephus Flavius and Philo Alessandrino, together with the valutation of the interventions adopted in Judea by the legates of Syria, it can only support the idea that the region was not independent, but with particular reference to military issues, was subordinate to Syria. In this context, although with limited powers following the Roman domination, the more or less independent fringes in the client kingdoms and the authority of the Grand Sanhedrin of Jerusalem survive in Judea.
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The interdictal protection was traditionally considered to be a prerogative of the praetor’s court in Rome. Epigraphic and papyrological sources still reveal that it was applied in several provincial territories, from Cisalpine Gaul and Betica to Egypt and the Middle Euphrates area. Precisely the sources from the eastern provinces, more than those from the Hispanic territory, often represent a real enigma for the interpreter, both because of the linguistic hurdle and the complexity of political and legal history of those territories.Gaius, in the paragraph 139 of the fourth book, introduces the discussion on interdictal protection by placing the proconsul alongside the praetor as magistrates competent to issue interdicta. Again, with reference to the provincial territory, the sources seem to involve a wider range of magistrates and officials who had access to this function, probably through a delegation of general or specific jurisdiction. In the eastern provinces, such delegation was generally granted on a case-by-case basis, as was the case for the procurators of Celesiria or the epistrategos of Egypt. The purpose was probably twofold: to lighten the workload of the praeses and to meet the immediacy requirements of interdictal remedies.
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The aim of the paper is to briefly present the hygienic and sanitary conditions of life of prisoners in the prison institutions of the Principality and Kingdom of Serbia, based on preserved testimonies of prisoners, as well as literature and sources related to the Belgrade County Court, the Požarevac Penitentiary, and some other prison facilities in different periods of the 19th century, paying attention to both male and female prisoners. In this way, in the form of an overview, the work is an attempt to present how Serbian state dealt with the question of sanitary conditions and modernization in Serbian prison institutions during the previously mentioned period, with an introductory section, which refers to the institution of prisons in Europe in the 19th century, for a wider context.
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An analysis of most definitions of organized crime point to the fact that its main goal is the acquisition of financial profit. That is why one of the basic measures that most affects organized crime is confiscation of illegally acquired property. The purpose of that confiscation, through different historical epochs, was to punish the perpetrator of a criminal act, to compensate the injured party, or to prevent and deter others from committing criminal acts. The goal of this paper is to review scientific literature and analyze the content of various legal acts and documents, with the application of the comparative method, and to point out the specifics of the institute of confiscation of property acquired through criminal activities as one of the measures in the fight against organized crime. Property confiscation as a special measure in the fight against crime has encountered numerous criticisms and controversies in domestic and foreign literature, which will be the subject of a separate part of this paper. Seizures differ from country to country due to different legal qualifications, making it difficult to apply this institute in a uniform manner, on a global level. We point out the results that this measure gave at the international level and the success and criticism of its application in domestic legislation and practice.
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The administrative and civil jurisprudence in Serbia and comparative legal systems do not concur on the nature of public procurement. While the literature on administrative law posits this emerging body of law into the public administrative law, many scholars of civil law in continental law systems subsume it under traditional law of obligations. This essay examines undefined systemic connections of the Public Procurement Act (PPA) with the law of obligations in the legal system of the Republic of Serbia. It suggests that the PPA norms, although do not explicitly refer to it, belong to a new special regime of contract law, which defining trait is the public personality of a procurement entity as one of the contracting parties. Therefore, it is proposed to consider rules of administrative decision-making on the contract awarding and its execution to be a new special regime of the contract law. Also, it is proposed to limit the superior position of the procurement entity in this relationship, for the sake of the preservation of basic civil law values.
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This research paper seeks to analyze the communication strategy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the Twitter network from February to October 2022. The research will focus on analyzing the tweets, the topics of discussion, the engagement rate, the types of media used, and the user interaction on the network. Additionally, the study will also review existing literature on the communication strategies of NATO on social media networks. The results of the analysis will provide insight into the effectiveness of the communication strategy of NAsTO on the Twitter network and will help to inform future strategies. The findings of this research will be useful to gain a better understanding of how NATO uses Twitter to communicate with its members and the public.
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This paper analyses court cases which qualified as organised crime in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). The final judgments were analysed according to the following criteria: the number of defendants; the continuity of membership within the crime organisation; the existence of criminal structure; the existence of a developed plan of activities; the type and number of the offences committed; influence on public authorities, the judiciary, and citizens; and sentences imposed on the defendants. This paper seeks to identify the extent to which court judgments are based on these criteria. A secondary analysis of the data related to the organised crime cases heard in the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period between 2015 and 2018 was conducted. This analysis encompassed 21 organised crime cases in which 27 judgments were pronounced. In the observed period (2015-2018), we identified two organised criminal groups that meet the criteria analysed. The identified number of organised criminal groups is minimal in relation to the total number of organised crime cases processed. Our findings contradict the prevailing view in public discourse that organised crime is a widespread security threat in B&H. The findings of our research demonstrated the existence of legal gaps, reflected in the lack of clear criteria on the basis of which OCGs can be distinguish from other forms of criminal activity. Legal and institutional weaknesses create opportunities for OCGs to operate and create a sense of insecurity among citizens in the already complex security environment in B&H.
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